ABOUT SLO JAZZ PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE

ABOUT SLO JAZZ

SLO JAZZ - SWING FOR HARDCORES is a site that comes to you from Krakow, Poland and is basically devoted to music photography, which usually means jazz photography most of the time here (not forgetting hardcore punk, ethnic or classical music, and the like, of course).

NOTE: This website is regularly updated and in a nonlinear way, so please, come back for more soon and check the subpages you are especially interested in to find the latest additions.

I do a lot of different things, but I am predominantly interested in all kinds of music, photography and writing. My photographs, texts and music have appeared in various books, newspapers, magazines, art catalogs, on cassettes, LPs and CDs. Some of the magazines my stuff has been published in include:

Musica Jazz (Italy)

The Wire (UK)

Maximumrocknroll (US)

Jazz (Czechoslovakia)

The New York City Jazz Record (US)

Jazz Forum (International Edition)

Student (Krakow)

Krakow(Krakow)

Some books I contributed to:

- Always in Trouble (An Oral History of ESP-Disk’, the Most Outrageous Record Label in America)by Jason Weiss

-Soul Side Story by Tomasz Budzyński

- I zawsze Krakow by Halina Bohdanowicz

- ???????

a big book on jazz in Krakow published by a public (sic!) cultural (sic!) institution Dworek Bialopradnicki here in Krakow (but I'm not going to mention the title since they used my work without my agreement, not giving me credit and not paying, and thus breaking the law three times. They still refuse to acknowledge my rights and to obey the law!!!).

(this one also used my work illegally, but later the things were partly settled due to mutual agreement)

Right now you can check the recently expanded version of the SLO JAZZ site. The NEWS section has been divided into ALL JAZZ NEWS which covers 2012 and OL' JAZZ NEWS for all the older stuff (where you can also learn about my latest jazz photo show held in Krakow last year and about my limited edition jazz photobook and how to get it). If you are multilingual you could try checking out the Polish language sections. Then JAZZ CDs and SPOTLITE as well (the one and only John Tchicai and his new band). To read about extempore, a brand new jazz journal from Australia, go to JAZZ BOOKS. If you want to see some of my jazz portraiture photographs, there are five subpages devoted to my pics. First, go directly to the B&W JAZZ PHOTO and COLOR JAZZ PHOTO sections but also to HARD JAZZ (unless you're afraid of exciting, but maybe not-so-smooth, sounds). When you survive, you could risk and try HARDER. I do believe that all real, honest music, regardless of genre, deserves attention and respect. In case of trauma, find relief in JAZZ EURO 2112. And last, but definitely not least, I would like to recommend to you JAZZ STRAIGHT OUTTA KRAKOW (still not finished) which is a favourite among many visitors.

If you have any questions and/or suggestions, you can contact me at this address:

slojazz @ op.pl

Thank you very much and hope to hear from you soon, Piotr Siatkowski.

A few recent lines from THE JAZZ WORD:

Sunday, June 5, 2011

SLO JAZZ

Piotr Siatkowski is a photographer/writer from Krakow, Poland. His website slojazz.net features samples of his illuminating photography of American and European jazz personalities, spanning decades of performances. He seems to have a knack for capturing an informal, revealing side to his subjects. Musicians such as Don Cherry, Maria Schneider, Hank Jones, William Parker and Tomasz Stanko are presented as joyous, artistic and humble beings. An interesting section of Siatkowski's site is Jazz Straight Outta Krakow, a brief history of the city and its music.Well worth a few minutes of your time.

By John Barron

Read more here: www.thejazzword.blogspot.com

Here are some opinions from JAZZ LIVES (Jazz: where"lives" is both noun and verb) about Slo Jazz:

THE ART of PIOTR SIATKOWSKI

Posted on March 27, 2011 by jazzlives

Many jazz photographers — even some with grand reputations and extensive bodies of work — fall into cliched, formulaic photographs. You know the familiar ones: the trumpeter or clarinetist with horn held to the sky, brow furrowed, sweat in profusion.

Every photograph, for them, has to have the admired individual playing, exerting, on the wing. All well and good, but once you establish that X plays the tenor saxophone you don’t always have to show her with it in the middle of a complicated twisting phrase. I don’t suggest that photographers should be forbidden to take the usual shots, but that the usual shots usually produce the expected results.

Polish jazz photographer Piotr Siatkowski is one of a small number of artists (another one will be the subject of a posting soon) who have understood this perspective, that the musician might be an intriguing human study even he or she has put the horn down for a moment, perhaps to face the camera or to be caught listening to someone else in the band or simply musing. He has captured Hank Jones, Maria Schneider, Johnny Griffin, Don Cherry, and many musicians whose work I do not know but whose faces I find arresting.

Piotr’s photographs — justifiably praised — can be found at his site: http://www.slojazz.net/., and I asked him if he would tell me something about this portrait of cornetist Wild Bill Davison:

Piotr tells me, “As far as I can remember, I took this picture of Wild Bill Davison around 1979. He lived in Denmark at that time and he was visiting Poland for a couple of gigs, being backed by a Polish group (most probably Old Timers). I met him the next day after he had played in Krakow, for an exclusive photoshoot and an interview. He was extremely nice and friendly. It was very easy to arrange the meeting. At those times you had no restrictions, rules, and regulations that you do now. I think he was also happy that I was so interested as his kind of jazz was a bit neglected then, to say the least.”

On first glance, this looks familiar. Wild Bill is in mid-phrase, head at its usual angle, his pinky ring a proud ornament. But one is drawn to Davison’s eyes: shaded, pensive, even sad. And Piotr has drawn an invisible line from those eyes to the bell of the horn, suggesting something deep, beyond words, about the distance the impulses had to travel from Bill’s nights of playing to the sound that would emerge . . . and that although the sound was brash and joyous, there was melancholy behind it, perhaps the sadness of someone who felt neglected by the larger world. The portrait isn’t stiff or studied, but it opens up to suggest things deeper than mere surface.

Visit http://www.slojazz.net for more evocative art — Piotr is also a fine jazz chronicler with words: he is doing noble work!

And some words Bob Rusch of Cadence Magazine wrote about the 2008 Jazz Photo Calendar (published by Slo Jazz) in a review in his excellent publication:

It's been awhile since we covered calendars in these pages. In years past (1982 through 1992) it seems there were, more often than not, a handful covered each year. Now from Poland comes JAZZ 2008 CALENDAR, a modest but elegant - in its black & white simplicity - datekeeper, produced and with photos by PIOTR SIATKOWSKI ( www.slojazz.net ). Each of the photos ( Wild Bill Davison, Larry Coryell, Pierre Favre, Hank Jones, Gary Bartz, and Joe Lovano & John Scofield ) is excellently reproduced on heavy semi-gloss card stock and could be considered live portraits ( the exception being the Lovano-Scofield picture, the only image that's not of a solo subject and is perhaps the most average of the works ). Images nicely frozen.